ABSTRACT
When the child is afraid to feel bodily sensations or emotions during trauma processing, the child’s emotion regulation needs to be improved. Mostly light interventions such as psychoeducation and a plan to manage feelings during and after the session are enough to overcome this barrier. Non-suicidal self-harming or suicidal thoughts or actions are common in chronically traumatized children and adolescents and do not necessarily form a barrier to trauma processing. Trauma-focused treatment relieves guilt, shame and overwhelming emotions and reduces non-suicidal self-harming and suicide risk. Children with a dissociative disorder need intensive work on emotion regulation before being able to process trauma. Interventions focus on feeling the body, recognizing and talking about emotions and managing adaptive feelings. Extreme anger and sadistic feelings can scare children and therefore these feelings need to be dissociated. Understanding and tolerating these feelings, without acting them out, prepares the child to process the traumatic memories connected to those feelings.
